The Zombie Plagues Dead Road: The Collected books. (42 page)

~Arlene's journal~

I was told about the journals, and I
thought it was a good idea. There are some keeping them here. I
thought I'd be another one. I've never had a child. All the girls
here want to have children. I can feel that, and I wish I could,
but I've never been able to. Maybe something is wrong inside, maybe
it isn't. I don't know.

It was something I was honest with
David about. That and our age difference I was sure would keep us
part. But he wouldn't have it. He loves me and to him that's
enough. I want that to be true. I want that to be the truth. And
there are five children here who need parents. I approached David
about that, and he thinks that's a good idea. So I guess we will
have our family.

We're joined to this other group now,
hell or high water as my mother used to say. We're heading out in
the morning. We're going towards a large tract of that Forever Wild
land, and we're going to settle there. Bob actually took my opinion
on horses, cows. How to get them there; how to keep them
there.

It has been a long time since someone
cared about my opinion, let alone asked for it. It felt
good.

We made lists of things we need to
take. I remembered something a little while ago that I forgot to
mention. Music. Either instruments to make it on, or a medium to
play it on. Or both really. Would that be nice? Maybe from those
solar panels that were mentioned. Music is important to
me.

We are in a room. A real room. Quiet
and dry, and who knows when we'll have that again.

~Janet Dove's diary~

I could write for an hour, a week, a
month, and still not be able to explain how I feel inside. I am so
happy. We're going to do it, Bob and I and all the rest. We're
going to the middle of this country, to the middle of the Forever
Wild area, and starting all over again. We are leaving in the
morning.

~Donita and the boy~

The fires burned bright, freshly banked
for the night. She could not say what it was in fire that
frightened her, but it did. It touched something deep inside,
something that she could sense had not always been there. Like at
one time she had embraced fire the same way the breathers did. Now
it only frightened her.

Behind her, the boy whined, high
pitched and frightened. The fire did the same thing to him. She
turned and allowed a growl to slip from her cracked and peeling
lips, and the boy quieted down immediately.

She looked back toward the fires. She
should have gone already. She should have taken the boy and moved
on. The breathers could mean death to both of them. The dog kept
coming around. And now there was another dog. She could smell
her.

But the breathers didn't usually hang
around that long. Others had come and gone just as quickly. These
should have been gone when the moon rose into the night sky, packed
up and gone while she and the boy had been in twilight. But they
were still there. Their terrible fires burning and sending their
stink into the air, creating heat. Heat was an enemy of all things
cold, she told herself. And she was a thing cold.

She stood, her legs flexing easily,
something they did not do just a short time ago. Behind her, the
boy stood also, soundlessly, and although she did not see him -
hear him - she felt him. She knew he had stood, knew he was waiting
for her to move, knew that he believed the entire world revolved
around her. All this with no words, touches, conscious
thoughts.

She looked off through the trees to the
opposite side of the road, across from where the breathers were
camped.

Her new eyes saw more than her old eyes
had ever seen, though not precisely as she had seen with those
other eyes. This sight was not suited to daylight. It could see -
would see - in daylight, but not well. The lesser light of the moon
was the light she needed.

She could see for more than a quarter
mile clearly. But it was not just about the seeing. Smell, the feel
of the air upon her skin, things that could not work the way they
used to work, now worked with her eyes. She saw the scent on the
wind. She perceived the movement of air across her skin with her
eyes. She saw it. Her eyes were her windows to the
world.

She saw the rabbits far across the
field, past the other road, and rabbits were fine, but it was not
the rabbits that had attracted her. It was the boy, not much older
than the one behind her, that had caught her attention.

He carried rocks in a pouch, held a
weapon in his hand as he stalked the rabbits.

He was alone. It was a thing that she
knew. He was not a part of the breathers that were camped not far
away. He was a loner, and he had managed to avoid the ones like her
that must have scented him, followed him. She scented the air and
drank in the information.

Alone... Hungry... Mistrustful. He
stumbled, and the rabbits spooked. Before he could react, the
rabbits were across the balding grass patches near the trees on the
opposite side of the road and into the tall grass. She could feel
them running through the grass. Tiny hearts beating fast, knocking
against their rib cages. She tracked the boy at the same time. He
had lunged for the tall grass and then had fallen back. His head
came up, scenting the air the way breathers did, and she knew he
had caught her scent, the same way any hunted animal did, even when
they did not yet know they were hunted. It had been the reason he
had stumbled and frightened the rabbits. She said nothing, simply
flexed her leg and leapt into the tall grass, the boy behind
her.

The woods emptied out into a narrow
valley sparsely populated with scrub pines, a small creek running
through the bottom. The boy made the creek at a dead run, but the
fire in his side caused him to stumble. She was not there to see
him stumble, but she knew it just the same. A second later the boy
was on him, knocking him flat to the ground. When Donita came upon
them, the boy had his hands tightly around the boy's throat, riding
his chest as he bucked and thrashed. She flew upon them, pushing
the boy aside, driving a knee into the boy's throat and closing off
the air he had been fighting so hard for. She pressed her body hard
against his, stretched out flat upon him, and held on as he
thrashed and clawed.

~

He fought hard, but he faded just as
quickly. With no air, breathers could not fight long. Something she
had learned, had known, she told herself now, but she did not
remember how she knew, she only knew that she did. When at last he
stopped his fight, she rolled off him and rose to her full height,
towering over him, looking down at him.

He was barely as big as the boy she had
already. He would be just as ignorant too, stupid... but open to
learn, and he seemed stronger, built bigger. Wherever he had been -
and she could smell places on him that she had never known -
wherever he had been, he had used his rocks and weapon well, kept
himself well fed. She sighed. It was not her choice alone, and she
could feel that the boy resented him, did not want him to be a part
of them. She waited for his emotions - still so much like the
breather he had been - to pass.

He came to his own understanding. The
whole was more than the one. Collectively, they could win. There
was no other way. He came to her, and she understood the change in
what he had felt. He squatted, his hands planted in the red dirt of
the valley floor. His eyes, not quite like her own yet, but
changing, turned up to the moon. Silver-blue moonlight painted his
face. She stood briefly and then moved to the boy where he lay, his
dead eyes reflecting dully the same moonlight that brought so much
life to the other boy. She lowered her body and then brought her
weight down upon his chest.

There was still warmth and it both
excited and repulsed her as her thighs settled on either side of
his ribs. She bent forward and lowered her mouth to his throat,
finding the hollow. She tilted his chin with one hand and then
turned his neck to the side. Her teeth found the artery below the
skin and closed over it. A second later the passion took her, and
she lost herself.

~The hour before Moon-set~

She crouched close to the boy, her
hands hanging at her side. The other boy was made. She knew he was
made, he was just having a little trouble finding his way back from
his first twilight. She had no sooner finished her thoughts than
the boy's back arched like a bow and he began to flop and buck. The
two waited as he fought the fact of death. The first few minutes
were the hardest, when your mind could not yet believe that it
could live without drawing breath. That time was barely even a
memory for her, clearer for the boy.

He bucked once more, arched his back so
hard she could hear the tendons straining and then bolted upright,
eyes wide, moonlight alive and shining in them. His chest heaved,
heaved again, but his lungs did not work, would not work. She
squatted still, her fingers tented upon the earth to hold the
weight of her body, and waited.

Chapter Four

~ March 29th~

“
No,” Mike said, “I don't
want to get up.”

“
Are you sure?” Candace
asked teasingly.

“
The sun isn't even up,”
Mike said.

“
Nope, but this is our last
morning like this for a while,” she said.

“
Oh,” his arms reached
around her and pulled her close. “In that case,” he
said.

~

After they made love, they lay awake
talking in low whispers, watching light creep into the
world.

“
There was a song I liked,
A minor,
like the key?”
Candace said.

“
I remember that. Some
guy.” Mike said.

“
Yeah. There was a line,
really there were a few lines that I liked, but one was like the
guy was talking about my life,” she said. “It was,
I'm just sitting here waiting on a bus for the
next
, talking about his life and how it
was, how he felt about it. That was me. I used to look out at the
world and wonder where I was going to, what moved me along to
whatever might be next, because there was nothing here for me.” She
finished softly.

“
I know that feeling. I
felt that as well,” Mike said.

“
Yeah, but where I'm at now
is the exact opposite of that. I've got the whole world somehow.
You... I know we'll have children, a safe place to live, friends.
God, how could I have been so far down? Now I can't wait to live
life, see what today is. It's just such a different place. I love
you so much,” she said. Her eyes were shiny in the sparse light. He
kissed her and pulled her to him.

“
I love you too,” he said
as he kissed her again. He kissed her neck, worked his way down to
her breasts, then across her stomach as she lay back into the
pillows.

And the light crept slowly into the
room.

~

Mike sat sipping coffee by the fire
when Jeff and Sharon walked over. Sharon settled into a
conversation with Candace. Jeff raised his eyebrows at Mike and
Ronnie. They both got up and walked away from the fire.

“
What's on your mind,
Jeff?” Mike asked

“
Probably nothing. I had
the overnight... kept hearing something, I don't know, out of
place. The Dog kept looking over at the woods, growling really low.
The fires were going, meat still drying, cows, deer, who knows what
else out there in the fields. Could be a predator, I
thought.”

Mike nodded. Ronnie looked concerned.
He stuffed his hands down into his pockets and leaned
closer.

“
That's it. No big deal. I
wasn't about to walk away from here and go check it out in the
middle of the night.” He sipped at his coffee. “Went over first
thing, right after daybreak. It was bugging the hell out of
me.”

“
What was it?” Ronnie
asked.

“
Nothing right out there,
but...” he turned and looked towards the woods, turned back, dumped
what little coffee remained in his cup, grounds mostly, Mike saw.
“Walk over there with me?” He asked.

“
Sure,” Mike
agreed.

“
Absolutely,” Ronnie said
tightly.

Mike returned his own empty cup to the
table, smiled down at Candace's questioning look. “No big deal,” he
told her. He turned away, and he and Ronnie followed Jeff across
the fields toward the small woods on the other side. Halfway there,
Candace caught up, Patty with her. Candace slipped one arm through
Mike's own; Patty had her other arm. “Don't know,” Mike told her.
“It's Jeff's show.”

The smell hit them before they reached
the woods.

“
Jesus,” Ronnie said, “What
in ...”

“
Bad, right?” Jeff said.
“That's why I wanted you to come along.” He moved his eyes to
include Mike, and then further to include Candace and Patty. “That
hit me hard, just like it did you.” He walked to the edge of the
woods and peered in. “Come on,” he said. “Take a look at this.” He
stepped into the tree line and disappeared from sight almost
entirely. Just another shadow in the shadows that made the tree
line their home.

Candace stepped into the shadowed
woods, and her eyes adjusted almost immediately. Once they did, she
could see well in the shadowed clearing, and it was clear to her
that something had been living here. She stopped. Patty bumped up
against her and then pressed her body tightly to her own, burying
her face in Candace's neck.